


Plums

by a_xmasmurder



Series: Marvel Bites [23]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Dogs, Gen, plums, spywork
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-21
Updated: 2017-06-21
Packaged: 2018-11-17 02:46:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11266335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_xmasmurder/pseuds/a_xmasmurder
Summary: A snapshot of Bucky Barnes in Romania.





	Plums

Bucky wakes up as the sun is beginning its climb over the horizon. He’s sorta proud of himself that he managed to stay on the bed this time, instead of rolling into a crouch on the floor. He’s also proud that he remembered he is in his apartment. He swings his legs over the edge of the bed. His mattress is on the floor, but whose isn’t in this part of town? Steve won’t frown at that because they are used to it. Hell, there was that month after Sarah died and he’d moved Steve out of that damned deathtrap of a place before the asshole drank both bottles of his cough meds, a whole month where they didn’t even have a mattress. He’d nearly resorted to pulling one out of the dumpster behind his family’s furniture shop before Steve came home crowing about his new job. In a week, they had a mattress. Bucky didn’t have to grovel to his da.

He frowns at his reflection in the mirror, even though he can only see the top of his head from here. Funny, he’s just as shitty about just asking for help, sometimes.

“Sometimes,” he mutters. “Yeah, okay, all the time.”

He kicks at his boots with his stocking feet. He still can’t undress before going to sleep, but he’s working on it. At least he’s certain that part of his neurosis is from his Army days. Don’t bother undressing, the world is going to shit in a hurry and we’ve got front row seats to the show! Step right up and see it in 3D Technicolor. Or was that ‘Nam? Had he been in ‘Nam? Probably. Steve would have too, if he hadn’t taken that plane into the ice. He’d read that, too. Stupid suicidal shit-for-brains. What a shit way to go. At least the Alps had been quick. After he hit that boulder, he doesn’t remember anything other than waking up without an arm and the trail of blood. Steve would have remembered everything. Freezing to death. Sucking water in because he couldn’t move to get a lungful of good air. God, had he been trapped? Dunno, results inconclusive during reconstruction of the crash site. Maybe he didn’t want to die? But why didn’t he just jamb something under the yoke and just jump? He shoves himself to his feet with a groan. This is the sort of shit that keeps him awake at night, wondering if he shouldn’t track Steve down himself and take him to a baseball game. Buy the boy a hot dog and a beer and let him be a human fuckin’ being for a while. Jesus wept. Kid goes and tries to off himself, and seventy years becomes a day or so for him. They just shove him right back in without wondering why the hell he didn’t just jump. No wonder the boy’s a mess.

In the mirror, he brushes the back of his hand against his chin. He can heal really fast. He can rip steering wheels out of moving cars. He can run for freaking days and withstand a head-on truck impact...sorta. Probably. Well, it was a bus, the lady in the crosswalk was moving so slow... he had to help her. The bus was already braking, and he’d put up his shoulder and kinda bounced off the grill. But it was an impact! And he survived it and saved a little old lady to boot! Damn it, let him have his glory! Anyway... all these things he can do with his souped-up body, and he can’t do a damn thing about hair growth. There’s a tiny patch under his chin that just… He scratches at it with his metal thumb. It won’t grow in! “Gah.” He scratches at it some more. “Why can’t I just have a normal beard?” He runs his tongue over his teeth and looks longingly at the crumpled toothpaste tube. “Wasn’t the future supposed to have replicators or something?” He has to go to the market anyway, why not hit up the little necessity store too? He rummages around under the kitchen sink until he found a box of baking soda and uses that instead. Toothpaste is cool and all, but nothin’ beats baking soda. He repeats that to himself over and over while rinsing his mouth of the godawful taste.

With that done, he grabs his backpack, hat and jacket, then heads out the door. A couple young punks lounge on the retaining wall along one street, and they mock him like they do every day. He tips his hat at them, and they cackle at him. A smile tugs at his lips for Steve. Steve’d be over there, giving them a stern lecture about manners. Especially if he hears what they’re teasing him about, hoo boy. Steve would have them by the ears! “Don’t tease veterans! They fought for your rights!” Well, this is Romania. Fuck your rights. Bucky never was a fighter, so he lets it go. The market is just down the road a bit, if you get past Stolojan’s place without getting eaten by his Belgian Malinois boys. Bucky carries two sticks of jerky in each pocket after Rahat (Shithead, hilarious) broke a canine on his metal hand. He whistles when he passes the open gate. “ _Baieti! Vino aici și ia-ți tratează_   _!_ ” Rahat and Pată reel around the fence and skid to a halt in front of him. “Good boys.” He tamps down the instinctive urge to cower. “Good,  _good_  boys.” He pulls out the jerky and holds both hands out. “Here ya go.  _Bine_!” The dogs snatch the jerky out of his hands as one and lay in the street to gnaw at it. He shuffles around their bulk and does a damned good job at not looking back to see if they were scenting the air.

The rest of the walk is uneventful; well, unless you don’t count the pothole the size of Rhode Island that a car had to swerve around, only to clip him on the hip because  _hello, why are you walking in the street dumbfuck?_ Word’s gotten around by now that Bucky’s some sort of Special Forces retiree, a real badass that brushes off little things like getting hit by buses and cars. Probably part of the old Soviet Union.  _But he’s too young,_ the old  _bunicile_ would say.  _Much too young. But what about that one man, ‘_ Captain America’?  _He is young, but also old. So old. He fought in Europe. My father remembers him._ Then the ladies would go back to their tea and cigarettes and complain about the young people having no jobs and smoking dope all the time. When he passes them in front of the hole in the wall everyone calls a teahouse, they smile at him with a whole three teeth between them and twitter about how good looking he’d be if he’d shave his beard and cut his hair. No pretty girl wants a scruffy man, no matter if he works construction or not. “ _Ai fi destul de drăguț dacă ai curățat puțin. Esti urât acum._ "

“Ha, me cute?” He responds in English, because these old women know it. “No, I don’t need a girl, I need a real woman, one that can handle me.” He winks as he passes. “Let me know when one of you ladies needs a man to clean up and keep right.” That makes them hoot with laughter and wave him off, and he grins.

The first stop he makes is for toothpaste. He eyes the straight-edge razor, but he’s not sure he can quite trust himself with that large of a blade and not just gut himself for all the shit he’s done. That, and holy  _fuck_ the price. He shakes his head and makes his purchase, then moves on to the farmer’s market. He does need to restock his fridge, so he haggles with the jellies lady and gets two for one on the less popular of her wares, but ends up paying a little extra for the fresh cream and butter. He manages to wiggle a few  _bani_ off the price of a loaf of knobby bread and three apples from the next lady and wins a smile from her two-year old Stefan. When he stops in front of Ana’s stall, he cocks his head.

She glared up at him, defiant. 

“You know what I want, dear. Hand it over.”

“Never. You are a scumbag and a scourge. Be gone.” She dials up the glare, and he smiles at her.

“C’mon, doll! I’m askin’ nice, here. Give it.”

“No. You do not deserve it.”

Around him, the flow of shoppers pauses for bare seconds before moving on. They are used to the strange foreigner by now, though the rumor mills still run. Soviet one day, German the next. American - closer, but not quite - and Portuguese - that was a new one - and a bastardized version of all of them when old Constantin starts running his Ciuc-powered mouth. They also know this routine of Ana and ‘Yasha’. The  _bunicile_ cluck about how he’ll get poor Ana pregnant inside of the month. The  _bunici_ complain that he buys all the good plums. They are both wrong, in different ways. The first way: he won’t get her pregnant.

The Red Room took care of that.

He holds out one gloved hand and crooks his fingers. He crooks his mouth in a cocksure smirk. He refuses to blow the Widow’s cover - all she’s doing is keeping tabs on him, after all. And if the hell heaped upon him when he failed his missions were any benchmark… no. He won’t stop Ana. He’ll just play the spy game with her. He crooks his fingers again. “Ana, darling. I paid you last week! You said you’d save them for me!”

Ana rolls her eyes and finally pulls out a small plastic bag. He lets her hook the handles onto his fingers with hands scarred from training, then pulls it back to check the contents. In the bottom are five perfectly formed plums. “ _Mersi, Ana._ ” He grins at her, and reaches into his back pocket to pull out a fistful of cash. Let the old men talk about him taking all the good plums. He’s not an animal. He pays well, and he leaves the best ones for the mothers in line behind him. That’s the second way they are wrong. He turns and tosses a wave over his shoulder to Ana. Time to go home and enjoy his lunch. 

Rahat and Pată are waiting for him. He’s got an armload of groceries and he doesn’t want to part with any of it. Shit shit shit.

“They like you!”

Petre Stolojan leans on his fence, cigarette hanging from thin lips. Piercing blue eyes mark the otherwise unassuming young man as a former soldier. Bucky turns from where the boys are standing guard. No, not just a soldier. Sniper knows sniper. He belays the thought that perhaps he should have headed to Svalbard instead of Bucharest. “Oh yeah? Is that why they tried to eat me last month?”

“He saw something shiny. Thought you had a toy!” Petre comes around the fence and whistles sharp. “  _Veni!”_ As one, the Malinois trot to his side. “And now you bring them treats and call them by name. You are a friend to them.”

"Great, that's...that's great." Bucky sighs. 

"No worries, comrade. No worries." Petre walks up to him, body loose and gait long and strong. "You and I, we should get a drink sometime."

"Maybe."

"Come now. Everyone has something to hide, comrade. Some, more than others. Drink with me soon, yes?" Petre's hand lands on Bucky's fleshy shoulder. A distant part of Bucky recognizes the prosthetic hand. He nods, and Petre smiles and walks away, whistling for Rahat and Pată. 

The rest of the walk is uneventful. Even the young punks have moved on to more entertainment. Bucky locks his door behind him and puts the bag of plums on the table. Everything else goes on the counter next to the fridge. He doesn't bother taking anything out of the bag before slipping his laptop out of his backpack, powering it up as he sits at the table. One by one, he takes the plums out of the bag, inspecting each one. The third one is the biggest, so he takes a big bite out of it. He moves his tongue around, savoring the fresh fruit at the same time as he feels around for the wax-encased SD card Ana had inserted into the fruit. He finds it and spits it out, then swallows. He peels the card out of the wax with his knife and inspects it for damage. Finding none, he inserts it into the laptop and opens the program while he eats the rest of the plum. 

He grabs another plum as surveillance photos of Steven Rogers fills the screen, and he studies his old friend's face.


End file.
